How would you improve the Paladin's Cover skill?

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

Remove gauge cost. Increase cooldown. Increase tether range by 10 yalms.

It already has a 2minute cooldown, the recast doesn't need extending, and increasing the tether range is dumb, because then you have to run off the boss to break it in certain circumstances which is a waste of dps, which will more often than not defeat the niche use that it currently is used for. Besides, if someone is outside of the range of current Cover, then they're probably too far away from the boss and basically griefing the healer(s) trying to keep people topped. People should only be outside max melee when mechanics force them to be.

[Lyth]

I've always wished that Cover let you do something similar to traditional Final Fantasy games, by letting you gap close to an ally.

I think the idea of changing to Cover to a permanent uptime buff like Dance Partner is interesting, because that's functionally how Knight's Code/True Knight worked. Perhaps while it's active, your chosen teammate also has a chance to block incoming attacks, with the rate augmented if you use Bulwark. And then perhaps you can use Intervene to gap close to your chosen teammate for some sort of a combined defensive buff (you'd have to take the damage off Intervene if you do this and make it into a pure mobility tool, but I think that's a better design choice for gap closers in general). The cooldown could be for re-applying it to a different target.

[Griphyt]

Variety in animation
Please, if you add skills that you can throw 3 times or more in a row, they may be different animations or attack moves, for example the WAR, PLD, DRK have an ability that can be repeated several times it would be good if they had at least two or three animation variations so that a skill is not so boring thanks.

[Arohk]

I've always wished that Cover let you do something similar to traditional Final Fantasy games, by letting you gap close to an ally.

That would actually improve the skill a lot, there is always a high chance that
You don't have enough recources for the skill when you need to use it (remove the gauge cost!)
The Target is too far away to use it.

[Daffidoodles]

Get rid of it and add an oGCD holy smite attack for max oath gauge.

[Mikey_R]

I've always wished that Cover let you do something similar to traditional Final Fantasy games, by letting you gap close to an ally.

I think the idea of changing to Cover to a permanent uptime buff like Dance Partner is interesting, because that's functionally how Knight's Code/True Knight worked. Perhaps while it's active, your chosen teammate also has a chance to block incoming attacks, with the rate augmented if you use Bulwark. And then perhaps you can use Intervene to gap close to your chosen teammate for some sort of a combined defensive buff (you'd have to take the damage off Intervene if you do this and make it into a pure mobility tool, but I think that's a better design choice for gap closers in general). The cooldown could be for re-applying it to a different target.

If you have to gap close to a party member to receive benefits, you make it more limiting in its application. Being next to someone isn't always better and this isn't even considering the potential for loss of uptime. Going with common mechanics in extreme+ content, overlapping AoEs with a vul debuff, designed so you cannot take 2, kills the tank, have to be in a certain position for a mechanic? You cannot use it. Double tank busters? useless, the list goes on.

As for having it be like dance partner, it would, 99% of the time, be used on the other tank to give them defensive benefits. No reason to have it on someone else, even in a targeted attack instance, as Intervention would be better.

Now, I am not saying there aren't some niche instances where it would be useful, but they would be so few and far between that you have to make the call as to whether it is really worth taking up an action slot for.

Get rid of it and add an oGCD holy smite attack for max oath gauge.

If you want to add an offensive option to the gauage, you have to take away the defensive side. Which is fine if you want to add Holy Sheltron and Intervention to their own cooldowns. However, the other thing to note is that having an action used only when the gauge is full is actually quite limiting, it is something Monk's hate about Chakra, and it comes down to the use it or lose it. If you do not use the oGCD asap, you lose a part of the gauge generation and potentially damage potential later in the fight. If you want to have some oGCD on the gauge, it would need to be something that you can use at lower gauge levels.

[Lyth]

No, the primary reason of being able to gap close to an ally is for movement purposes and nothing else. Thunderclap is designed this way and it's vastly superior to the circa 2013 gap closers that tanks currently have. Intervene suggests that it provides a defensive function as well. If you want to tie in a bit of defensive flair for stackbusters in homage to the old games, then you can do it this way if you want. It's not at all an necessary addition, though, niche or not, and I'm fairly certain that other tanks will be demanding equivalents if you bring something like this in.

I'm already thinking about how I'd like to see Plunge get revised into a pure mobility tool.

[True-to-Caesar]

Remove gauge cost, the skill is niche enough to have more costs to it.

Increase way way more the distance of the tether/link

As someone said, bring back the sharing of buffs. Removing that killed the last few utility of the skill.

[Mikey_R]

Remove gauge cost, the skill is niche enough to have more costs to it.

Increase way way more the distance of the tether/link

As someone said, bring back the sharing of buffs. Removing that killed the last few utility of the skill.

I hope you realise you have basically described Intervene except with the damage coming to the Paladin rather than staying on the target? (There is the gauge cost, but that is pretty much meaningless in this comparison). So, the next question is, are there any examples where this is a meaningful difference that affects how a mechanic is handled and the subsequent healing requirement after?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Since I see the idea coursing around a few times.

"Increase the tether range by X"

Allow me to say this as someone who uses / used Cover techs, if you were to extend Cover's range of the tether aka the distance before the tether stops working you'd actually make it more clunky for certain techs that would involve moving back and forth from your position to only get hit for a limited amount of hits.

While there have been no recent attempts to utilise techs with cover other than essentially trying to circumvent a provoke on P8Sp1's buster to keep the boss facing the same direction (I saw that recently and give me honestly a bit of a giggle), future-proofing Cover would be best by not extending the reach to avoid making usage of Cover more clunky.

Let's start simple by simply removing the gauge cost.